andCastiel: (Into cell phone) This isn't funny, Dean, the voice says I'm almost out of minutes!

Will watch the finale tomorrow night when I'm not so tired. You know what's worse than getting up an hour and a half early to do training for folks in Bangalore? Coming in an hour and a half early only to find an email canceling the training. (One of them was sick, but still....)

The fire alarm went off for either floor 7 or floor 8 a while ago. (I'm on floor 4.) Our policy (enforced by me, the Floor Fire Warden), is that unless the alarm goes off on your floor, you stay put.

Then my boss comes over. "We need to clear the floor."

"The alarm isn't going off. We don't clear the floor."

"I was told that we need to clear it anyway."

OK, I then proceeded to make everyone on my floor understand why I'm the Floor Fire Warden. I have a strong, carrying voice, and I'm not afraid to use it. Also, I can make engineers get up and leave. ;-)

I had the floor 80% clear when the word came back. False alarm. Everyone back in the building. *sigh*

...and I just realized it would have been the perfect time to leave my Secret Santa present. Oh, well, tomorrow!

Gods. When it's dead here, it's really dead here. The boss, V, is out with a nasty combo of a virus, sinus infection, and asthma. Ew. She was in briefly today to take care of those things only she can, and I chased her home pretty quickly.

I get to deal with the teams. I assign art requests. C says: "I can't do that, R does that!" "It's only removing one word." "But he can do it in two minutes! It'll take me like 20 minutes!" "Hasn't he cross-trained you in that yet?" "No. He says next week. (pouts)" "Sigh. Fine. M, assign her that thing of yours, OK?" "Why are you giving me--" "Yeeeeees?" (shuts up)

Sweartogod, when I become the lead...V is very Southern, i.e., very polite right up until she stops being polite. I'm only partly Southern that way, so I tend to get firm with them a mite quicker. They'll learn.

On a much happier note, I'll be going to TWO concerts the first week of March: They Might be Giants and Dropkick Murphys. Same venue, two days apart. As I told the World's Best Niece, we might be the only people besides the employees at both shows.

And in other news: got my hair cut today. Will do my sales taxes tomorrow. Discovered that my water heater has a leak (thank goodness I'm in a rental unit and they'll take care of it on Monday). Worked out three times this week. Start classes Monday.

Work is a weird combination of Fail and Win. Fail because we are doing 3-4 times the normal amount of work, which for me at least has meant close to 50 hour weeks. Plus meetings and other drek. The Win is that I get overtime! The Fail is that some of my co-workers are being complete divas about doing overtime, as if they're too good for it. *sigh* The Win is that my boss thinks I am amazing and she got me a halfway decent raise...at least for my company.

And I have done my usual bit of putting all the work for my (so far) two Fall shows off until the last minute. I have to make SO MUCH STUFF between now and the weekend of November 3-4. That show is the Austin Celtic Festival, then there is a little one-day show in Burnet, Texas. Austin Texas peeps must come out and see me!

I just got word from the Cherrywood Art Festival that once again, I was turned down. *sigh* Still no word from the Wheatsville Art Festival. But if I don't get in, I'll do wire-wrapping demos at the Austin Gem & Mineral Show. I'm going to take another class or two in the spring--I'd like to take Art Welding and hopefully chasing and repoussage.

I tried! I went to bed before 11, but couldn't fall asleep until after midnight. 6:15 came along way too early. Six more weeks of this... hopefully I won't fall asleep on dremieland Trag tomorrow as we watch Robin Hood. Hopefully I won't fall asleep on my FrameMaker students today. Or while I'm working on documentation. Or during the Fire Warden meeting this morning.

Yes, once again I have Volunteered. I am the backup Fire Warden for my floor. I am supposed to help make sure everybody gets out during an emergency (fire, tornado, Godzilla attack). Maybe I should ask if I should bring in a baseball bat? I work in a very geeky engineering firm and I can see having to roust certain people out of their cubes. Hmmmm.